Indiana schools to teach children to type instead of joined up handwriting

Schools in the US state of Indiana are abandoning teaching children how to do joined up handwriting in favour of showing them how to type.

In a sign of the endless march of technology individual schools will no longer be required to instruct pupils in long hand from the age of eight, and they may only learn to print.

The move has led to fears that youngsters could grow up not even knowing how to sign their own name.

According to a memo sent by the Department of Education to schools on April 25 they can continue to teach handwriting of they want, but children will be expected to achieve proficiency with a keyboard.

Local teachers said the effects of technology on handwriting in schools were already apparent and students were "atrocious" at it.

Andree Anderson of the Indiana University urban teacher program, told the Times of Munster: "It's not at the top of the priority list. Teachers are responsible for so many things that handwriting just gets lost. There used to be a sense of pride attached to having the best penmanship.

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"Students are carrying their texting into their daily writing, and that's not something we want to see. We're seeing acronyms in their writing and that's not acceptable."

The Indiana move is part of a wider reaction against joined up handwriting in American schools. Some schools in the state of New York have already dropped it New common core standards for English, which have been adopted by 42 states, do not formally require schools to teach longhand handwriting, known in America as "cursive," but they can if they want to.

Dr Scott Hamilton, an Indiana clinical psychologist, said it made sense to only teach children how to sign their names in joined up writing.

He said: "The time allocated for cursive instruction could then be devoted to learning keyboarding and typing skills. From an intuitive standpoint, this makes sense, based on the increasingly digital world into which this generation of children is growing up."